Hospitality businesses are not maximising every tool in their armoury to attract and retain staff, according to specialist research consultancy KAM.
New research, in partnership with Growth Partners, has revealed that hospitality businesses are not effectively communicating what they already offer. Seventy-five per cent of employees couldn’t find information about
employee benefits while researching their hospitality job. Twenty per cent said they only found out during their interview, and 15% had to wait until after they’d started in the role.
Hospitality employees say their current employers need to do a better job of communicating the services available to them. Sevety-nine per cent would use employee engagement services more if they were made aware of what was
available.
“Hospitality businesses are absolutely missing a trick when it comes to attracting new employees, with very few effectively communicating the level of employee benefits,” said KAM managing director Katy Moses.
“So many companies offer phenomenal employee engagement services, but very few are using this to attract potential candidates. Even current employees say they’re not made aware of what is available to them, despite the clear impact they can have on staff retention.”
The research found that 55% of employees have (knowingly) worked in a hospitality role which offered some kind of employee engagement services. Unsurprisingly, this is much higher for those who have worked in larger multi-site businesses. Only one in four who work in single-site businesses say they have been offered employee engagement services. Across the board, those in a back-of-house role are least likely to say they have been offered employee engagement services.
But despite high numbers of employers offering hospitality employee engagement services, the research found that many employees find them difficult to understand and access. Sixty-eight per cent said they would use employee engagement services more if it was easier to access. The majority would find it easier if they were all accessible in one place, like an app (77%).
Claire Clarke, people director at Flat Iron, said: “We are expecting our employees to download apps on personal phones, unless they are head office. When it’s someone’s personal phone, and we are asking people to interact by those means, it just gets a bit sticky. It’s app fatigue. The perfect solution would be you join, here is your company app, it’s going to give you engagement, comms, rotas, pay, it’s a single sign on.”
The majority of employees (75%) say that offering employee engagement services makes the business a more attractive place to work, and there is an expectation for businesses to offer services which look after their physical and mental wellbeing, as well as their financial wellbeing.
In fact, offering certain benefits can have the power to encourage employees to switch jobs.Eighty-three per cent said their company offering a specific health and wellbeing benefit contributed to them deciding to switch jobs.
Scott Read, chief executive of employee services at Growth Partners, said: “We’ve been keen to understand the relationship between the awareness and usage of employee engagement services, and the number of vacancies in the
hospitality sector.
“The research has really highlighted a potential problem — businesses may have employee benefits in place, but if they’re not easy to access or not communicated effectively, they’re not having an impact, potentially adding to the problem rather than helping to resolve it.”
With regards to health and lifestyle, the most popular benefits among hospitality employees are gym discounts, flexible shifts, healthy eating programmes, and medical healthcare (no surprise that this is particularly popular among older employees.) The most sought-after financial benefits are 24/7 online access to pay documents, the ability to receive their pay earlier than pay day, and an online chat service to query/sort out issues with their pay slip.
Anne-Marie Sarantis, head of people at Gusto, said: “Everything has changed since Covid, and there has been a shift
towards better engagement and usage of benefits. It’s all important, but, equally, many employees don’t even use it when we give it to them. So it’s important that these services can be easily accessed and that we, as a business, signpost them sufficiently to our employees. You can’t not have employment engagement services in this day and age.”
The study also looked at happiness levels among current employees and found that 88% of people currently working in hospitality are happy in their role. This decreases to 78% for those working specifically in pubs and bars, and is even lower for those working back-of-house (73%).
